Here’s a Look at the Teams Favoured to Win the EuroLeague
The EuroLeague basketball tournament is in full swing with teams from cities across Europe including Moscow, Madrid, Istanbul, Athens, Belgrade and Milan all fighting to win this year’s championship. The betting is furious with sites like betolimp.com seeing increased betting activity as the season progresses.
The EuroLeague, is the European-wide professional basketball club tournament organized and operated by EuroLeague Basketball, since 2000. The champions of the best European national domestic leagues, along with some of the other biggest teams from the most important national domestic leagues, play in a league system format that culminates with a finals.
The teams with the top eight winning records at the end of the 30 game regular season advance to the playoffs, which are held as four individual 5 game playoff series. The higher placed team in the regular season standings of each playoff match-up has home-court advantage in each playoff series, playing 3 out of the 5 games at home. The winners of each of the four playoff series advance to the Final Four. The Final Four features two semifinals games, a third place game, and the championship game.
The EuroLeague title has been won by 21 different clubs, 13 of which have won the title more than once. Real Madrid, with nine titles has been the most successful EuroLeague club. Fenerbahçe is the current EuroLeague champion and won their first title after they defeated Olympiacos, in the 2017 final.
The teams are currently in round 21 of their season, meaning 21 games have been played. This year the competition has been bunched at the top with CSKA Moscow taking a three game lead at 17-4. The club just had a fantastic January and is currently on a four game winning streak CSKA is led by a star backcourt that includes guard Nando Del Colo who is averaging 16.4 points per contest on 52% shooting from the field and 50% from the three point line. He was the EuroLeague player of the month for January when he had a 22.8 Performance Index Rating. His teammate Cory Higgins is not far behind, averaging 13.8 ppg on 62% shooting and 48% from three.
Tied for second place with a 14-7 record is Greece’s Olympiacos Piraeus who registered its sixth consecutive home win by downing reigning EuroLeague champion Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul 95-70. They are led by power forward Georgios Printezis who averages 50% shooing from the field and has a habit of stepping up big defensively for big games. He played a big role in shutting down the usually high flying bug men from Fenerbahce Dogus.
The other second place team is the reigning EuroLeague champion, Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul who also have a record of 14-7. Last year the tema finished in fourth place and went on to win the title so at this point in the season they are acutally ahead of last year. The team has several new members and is without last year’s Finals MVP center Ekpe Udoh However the team has some very good players and is led by Center Jan Vesely who was a former NBA player and is averaging 13.2 ppg and making 60% of his fireld goals. The team looks strong in spite of the recent loss to rival Olympiacos Piraeus and it looks like they will definitely be fighting to defend their title this year.
There are several other teams who are having good seasons including perennial powerhouse Real Madrid and the playoffs loo to be shaping up to be a huge battle.